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Yeah, I do want to keep posting the whole set here, esp as AO3 is being unstable lately. This is for Gildaurel's prompt, "from an earlier canon point/ when the two first get together (before Pact I)? Stefen's desires/ first impressions."
PACT IV (A FISH OUT OF WATER)
I feel unsettled here - the path's so narrow that I'm afraid Melody will misstep and pitch me straight into the stream, but it's more than conventional worry that's getting at me. The woods are strange to me, and I've no idea where he's leading me; I'm just blindly following, watching sharp-edged patches of sunlight pass over his shoulders and back, not paying damn near enough attention to Melody's footing and my ass keeps paying for it. I hope he makes it up to me later in kind. I wish we could ride side by side and talk as we did in the open fields, but he looks back at me every so often, always smiling, and I'll take the reassurance - through-and-through city rat that I am, and Wyrfen feels even more foreign to me than other woods I've blundered through. Before we reached the stream the trees were so dense that they came close to blotting out the sun, and there's something bothersome in their shape, in the way their roots curl to the water to drink like a pack of rangy dogs that might end their respite and return to the hunt at any moment. Everything is alive. This place isn't still, it's lurking sinisterly. I hope he has a good reason for dragging me out here.
Vanyel clearly doesn't share my troubles. He's riding one-handed; his mount needs no direction and he's been trying to keep his injured right arm relaxed and unburdened when he can. He's become tired of inactivity and we were both getting frustrated with being hemmed in by company, and this morning he asked me if I'd like to go riding with him for the day - "just the two of us," a cosy smile; we've often taken short rides on the Palace grounds with 'just the two of us' and pretended it wasn't worthy of comment, but hearing him spell it out like that turns it into...well.
I played innocent and suggested to him that I bring my gittern in case we felt like stopping to make music together. That's my favourite euphemism, my go-to picnic pickup line - I was hoping he'd take to it and was rewarded by a sly look as he nodded agreement. Just a look. Not so unlike the ones I've been getting from over his shoulder. I got good at reading him during our just-friendship, but since we tumbled into bed together I've not yet found my feet or my wits again; overtures that had previously got me shot down are now silently welcomed and I haven't yet got used to the luxury. He returns them more rarely, asking for very little but refusing me nothing. I've tried starting conversations about what he's into and my inquiries mostly end in awkward silence.
But I get those looks.
He makes a lot more sense here on the other side of words. I could still talk to him forever, but lately he's shown me so much that can't be said.
I'd had a thousand or more fantasies of what would happen when we finally made love. I'd nursed them for years and they'd matured as I had - from gawky pull-off thoughts that were romantic in their simplicity, to litanies of the acts I'd tried and liked; everything I learned about what I liked to do and feel got thrown into that ever-refining, ever-selfish mirage. Becoming friends with him made him suddenly real, and I was forced to start wondering what he'd want from me once I got him between the sheets. He gave me months to guess, and to hope. And to fear - what if we were hopelessly incompatible? I'd do whatever he wanted, I figured. Anything. At least once, anyway.
And now I still don't know what but he's shown me how; with passion and openness, letting masks fall away with his clothing, cutting through all the sexual artifice I've ever learned and showing me what it's like to make love with someone you care about. No illicit thrill I've ever sampled has felt as true or powerful as that, and he's taken whatever I've offered, sex and affection and silent assurances of my lack of innocence, and responded to every part of it with open, vocal joy.
I don't think it's just (just!, as if I were somehow accustomed to this wonder) that we're lifebonded, or that he's an empath (although that part is a pure sexual blessing); I think it's simply how he is. He gives all of himself at once. If he treats everyone he goes to bed with that way, no wonder he so rarely does it at all. I've never dared let any man but him even know that I have a heart, and he wilfully dropped his into my hands the very second I set them on his body.
I watch him ride, and I let myself lapse into reveries of loving and anticipation. I do hope Melody keeps her footing because I am easily giddy enough to fall straight off her back.
I don't know anything of this place beyond what my own feelings are telling me and what I can glean from watching Vanyel; familiarity, and a cloak of poetic wyrd that I could make up a million frivolous rhymes about - I don't think this place is much less strange to him than it is to me. And maybe that's all he's brought me here for, to share stories, and make up new ones. Perhaps we've come here to share a ghost tale...
The road rounds a corner, and to my surprise we're suddenly at a lake. He looks back at me again and offers his sweetest smile yet. ...Or a fantasy.
Melody is drinking noisily from the fast-flowing water at the stream-mouth, Yfandes more delicately so, and I swear she's looking at me like she's seen something funny. Maybe she has; I know a lot of songs about how romantic woods and lakes and so on are, and I could happily sing him one, but surely he realises I've never come within a league of acting one out? I've not been this far off the beaten track in my life before now.
He's waded out into the shallows, boots tossed far up the bank, and I slip my own off and follow him out into the sunshine, gasping and wobbling - the stones are slick and the water is unexpectedly chilly, even at its most shallow, and I wonder what anyone who knew what a real bath is would be doing here.
I stumble up to him, and as I catch his hand I find the first piece of joy in it; there's no one around. No one. I bring his fingers fearlessly, foolishly, to my lips and his smile is like day breaking in my heart. How long have you waited to be carefree and love someone? I ask myself as he cups my face and kisses me, wistfully free.
"What's the matter?" he asks, sensing my confusion.
"Nothing," I assure him, because I'm not sure how I could ever be otherwise while he's touching me. "Water's a bit cold."
He shrugs. "You'll get used to it fast enough. Can you swim?"
Really, beloved, you dragged me out here on a whim and only now thought it worth asking? I leave it at "Yes," because he doesn't need to hear about childhood forays for duck-eggs along a river that was both water-fount and sewer, or about riverboat-gamblers and whore-traders or the threat that she'd sell me to them before they set sail the next morning and tell everyone that I'd drowned, how sad, so I damned well made sure I could swim and everyone on the street knew it - It's the wrong time to tell him any of that. Maybe he'll never want to know. Who the hell would?
He's simply nodding, satisfied, and he turns around and lifts up his shirt, arms crossing over as he bares his back to me in the full sun; it's like looking at an exquisite statue that someone attacked violently with a chisel, faultline scars in a half-dozen places begging me to touch and trace and take pain away. The newest wound is a barely healed pit in his shoulder tissue; one of many that was worse than it looked.
He tosses his clothes after his boots; I smile stupidly because it's a tiny endearing something that I would never have done. There was no crevice on my long-ago riverbank where they wouldn't have been found and sold before my feet touched dry earth again, but I'll do stupid, careless things with him anywhere and any time until the day he pries my heart from his own and throws it into the water. I can't look at him, be with him, see his scars and his faith in humanity, and not know that I'm playing with something dangerous.
Something I've wanted to play with for a long time now.
So help me if he ever finds out all the things I had in mind.
I let him pull me after him, shivering and suppressing my yelps as the cold water reaches places it doesn't belong; he stretches forward in the waist-deep water, turning into the slow current, watching me as he floats away on his back. I feel like my feet are sinking into metaphor - deep water, devils and tempting sirensong, and I follow him into strange currents, reaching for his hand as he slips it away from me, realising it's a race at the same moment he does.
I follow. I can't see well enough to do anything else, spray and jumping-fish arcing away from his body as the moment carries him away. I take a great breath and hold it, diving blindly onward. I kick hard and try to thrash my way ahead of him, but he's more forceful and lively than the sun on the water, and I don't know these currents and haven't a clue where he's going, I'm guided only by fleeing fish and stubbornness and the thrumming soul that always said to me, come catch me; my instinctive response, I did and I shall.
Eventually my knees brush the rockbed again and I lift my face up from the surface, and find him resting on his knees in the shallows, pulling twigs from his loose hair and chiding me. "Can't beat an injured old man?"
"Oh, shut up. Look what I found." I raise my hands from the murky shallows and let him see my catch - a whitefish floundering in my grip.
I note the look on his face - he's surprised, maybe fascinated, by my opportunistic foraging. Did he know I have it in me to be vicious? "Well, that's lunch sorted."
We ate naked. There's a lot to be said for it. He taught me how to build a campfire and then lit it with an impatient wave of his hand. We're quite a team. We pull our unfortunate spitroasted benefactor's warm flesh away from each side of her spine, sharing the additional treats of her roe and her head and leaving her guts and bones on the lakeside for the birds to play with.
I admit my surprise that he'll eat fish-heads, but he mutters something about the things you learn to do while you're at war and he sucks the bitter flesh from his fingers. I nod silently and duck away to clean my hands and face in the water. Hey, look, it's something else we have in common. Yes, I know that coming by wilds-knowing hadn't been all fun and games for him. Little ever had. I see his reflection rippling as he sits beside me, his life like his body like a map of borderland chaos, a transposed tangle unwinding itself in my heart. At least he can tell me where the scars came from. At least I can touch them, learn each of their stories.
He sets a bold hand atop my thigh and I meet his speculative eyes.
We're back in the lake in moments, rolling into the shallows with arms around each other and lips pressed together. The shock of cold water tempers my appetite, and I let myself feel and see, watch his closed eyes, his hair floating free above the pebbles, feel him fitting in my arms like a perfect damned cliche, heart beating hard against my own.
There's no way I deserve that look on his face. He's offering me everything because it's the only kind of love that he knows, and if he knew some of the things I'd consider taking -
There's guilt and love and desire in my hands, stoking my wants and also chilling them. I could ruin everything. I could have so much more. He might like it. He might never let me touch him again if he knew what I've thought about doing to him. No one so scarred should look so innocent, breathing gently against my neck and letting me touch him wherever I want to. Godsdamnit, I wish I knew how far we could go together.
I slide a little deeper into the lake and pull him with me, twisting down the slope of the lakebed so our feet face the shore and our torsos are curled above a few handspans of water. He was right, one does get used to the cold; my lust isn't retreating and neither is his, and I put one testing hand to him. That draws a ready gasp, and he throws his head back in the water, pulling me atop his body.
Some predatory impulse takes that as invitation and I set my forearm to his neck as I kiss him, then force him down before he can draw breath.
It's a game, or a race, I hope he takes it as such, my hand playing over his cock as he sinks under me, and I feel his rush of confused lust and panic. His eyes meet mine from twelve inches underwater, and I want to mouth 'trust me', and I don't dare because I'm feeling so much so overwhelmingly that I can't trust me.
He relaxes. For a long moment his life seems to tilt under my grip, shoulders sinking and his cock still jutting into my hand as I jerk him off, harder than ever; I watch tiny bubbles rise, see his eyes slip closed in the murk, feel an echo sense like the swell of a wave washing over me, an unanchored, reaching emotion that my wishful mind hears as 'I trust you' -
And I let him go.
Water sprays all around and he clings to me, heaving in air. I hold him awkwardly and wonder what in the seven hells I was playing at - roughing up someone I love who could kill me with one panicked thought? Could the stakes be any higher?
But I had it. Just for a moment I took exactly what I wanted and he let me have it.
We tumble back against the shore, and I find my body over his again. His eyes are red but bright with the life that I'd casually threatened, and he won't let go of me. Please, ask me for something. Tell me not to do it again ever. Tell me to make it up to you, and how. Tell me what you need and what you dreamed of when you dreamed about making love at a lakeside with me because it must have been better for you than that.
The words don't come, because we're kissing again. Harder and more desperately, because he has earned the right to rob me of air.
We have got to talk about this, I think hopelessly as I close my thighs over his cock.
This is one of the worse positions I've ever done this in. Definitely the worst location. My elbows are planted in the dry pebbles either side of his head, getting raked raw as I slide my pressed thighs up and down over him, trying to give him pleasure in the movement of my flesh. It's like some half-assed apology for that foul trick I pulled, and would that I could have presented it properly, come to him oiled up like a temple offering; water isn't nearly so giving.
His arms are tight around me and his face is out of sight under; he's lifting his hips with my movements and I hope that means I'm doing something right, and I should have more confidence in my competence than that, and I should be connected enough with him to know, but mostly I just feel wretched and panicked. His hold on me slackens, and he snakes a hand between us, finding my cock lodged against his belly - oh please don't, I don't need -
I bite my lip and try to have a lustful thought that isn't about that perfect still moment where I had his life in my hands. It doesn't work. That one image of him could keep me in fantasies for years, and it's so indelibly near that I can hear it whisper to me - I can hear me whisper to me - why not do it again?
No. No. I'm trying not to scare him off, for hell's sake. I am trying to make this man happy and the only way I know how is by delivering good sex, the normal kind, the kind that doesn't involve breaking nice boys on purpose. For hell's sake, I don't want to hurt him for real.
His hand tightens over me and I can't move right any more, can't keep steady and please him and let him please me and not think about it all at the same time. I roll off him, and the water isn't soothing - it's just cold.
He looks dizzily confused, squinting the sun away from his eyes. "Are you alright?" he asks, and reaches out for me again.
I take a guilty calm from his touch, as if I were silently forgiven for something I can't bring myself to ask forgiveness for, and I nod and curl my face against him, still feeling the need to make love and amends with him. Alright, so we just tried something that didn't work and it wasn't the part where I cut off his air supply. I don't even know what to think about that.
He's somehow not been put off at all; his erect cock digs hard against my hip, so I turn and press tight against him, matching his cock to my own, wrapping a hand around both of us and looking into his eyes.
I should have done this from the start, without the detours - it's close and teasing and intimate, much better with him in reality than it was in my innocent old fantasies. We press our hips together and move steady and teasingly slow, head brushing head and thin streams of fluid excitement spilling and mixing together. My hand drops, cups his balls against mine and caresses back upwards as he gasps and rubs against me. Gods, I love touching his cock. The shape of him, long and hard under tender flesh, finding friction in my contact even as he gives it to me in return.
I lean back so I can look at him while we bring ourselves closer, and I wish his fine silver eyes could save me but it's the red pressure mark on his neck that makes me gasp and want. Oh gods, I want this to be enough. Why can't I just keep enjoying him and never have these treacherous thoughts about taking and hurting and making him give me control? Hasn't he suffered enough already without the devil in me wanting him crying on his knees?
Maybe all I ever wanted is a man who won't break no matter what I do to him.
He closes his eyes and I kiss him, finding his mouth gasping open for me, tongues touching in our rhythm; my free hand slips over his shoulder and I feel him twitch as I draw too close to his wound. I touch lower, finding scar-valleys among ridges of muscle, tracing my way down to his ass, squeezing him closer. Our cocks rub hard together and my mind sinks into those confused valleys of lust, thinking of his strength and his will to survive, of each mark that he's taken and lived through, of each time I've watched him come in my arms and his face as I held him under the water still alive and marked and tender and giving me, anything, everything I ask, body and will and breath -
I come hard, grunting gracelessly into his mouth and feeling my seed pooling on my belly, and as my hand tightens around him he follows, arching against me for a long second, his head thrown back into the water.
I wish I knew what he was thinking about.
We wash and relax in the shallows, exchanging playful splashes and satisfied smiles, before swimming lazily back to our starting point. Yfandes is lounging on the riverbank; I avoid her eyes, but if she were human I'd swear she looked amused. We shake ourselves off and pull our clothes back on; his shirt clings to his torso, wet hair leaving a transparent trail against his back that shows his bare back through white linen, and I wonder again what in seven hells this beautiful, honourable man did to end up lifebonded to a monster like me.
I don't know how he's going to explain the inevitable bruise. I don't know how I'd explain it. I'm really not used to even caring what my lovers look like the next morning, let alone how they feel about me, and now I'm horrendously torn about all my darker impulses. He didn't say no. He didn't say yes. I never asked him and I don't want to know what he'd think of me if I were to do so.
It doesn't have to matter. I'll be gentle, I tell myself. I can be completely gentle.
He looks back at me one last time before mounting his companion, and he blows me an elegant kiss.
I feel gentle like the outer edge of a flame.
PACT IV (A FISH OUT OF WATER)
I feel unsettled here - the path's so narrow that I'm afraid Melody will misstep and pitch me straight into the stream, but it's more than conventional worry that's getting at me. The woods are strange to me, and I've no idea where he's leading me; I'm just blindly following, watching sharp-edged patches of sunlight pass over his shoulders and back, not paying damn near enough attention to Melody's footing and my ass keeps paying for it. I hope he makes it up to me later in kind. I wish we could ride side by side and talk as we did in the open fields, but he looks back at me every so often, always smiling, and I'll take the reassurance - through-and-through city rat that I am, and Wyrfen feels even more foreign to me than other woods I've blundered through. Before we reached the stream the trees were so dense that they came close to blotting out the sun, and there's something bothersome in their shape, in the way their roots curl to the water to drink like a pack of rangy dogs that might end their respite and return to the hunt at any moment. Everything is alive. This place isn't still, it's lurking sinisterly. I hope he has a good reason for dragging me out here.
Vanyel clearly doesn't share my troubles. He's riding one-handed; his mount needs no direction and he's been trying to keep his injured right arm relaxed and unburdened when he can. He's become tired of inactivity and we were both getting frustrated with being hemmed in by company, and this morning he asked me if I'd like to go riding with him for the day - "just the two of us," a cosy smile; we've often taken short rides on the Palace grounds with 'just the two of us' and pretended it wasn't worthy of comment, but hearing him spell it out like that turns it into...well.
I played innocent and suggested to him that I bring my gittern in case we felt like stopping to make music together. That's my favourite euphemism, my go-to picnic pickup line - I was hoping he'd take to it and was rewarded by a sly look as he nodded agreement. Just a look. Not so unlike the ones I've been getting from over his shoulder. I got good at reading him during our just-friendship, but since we tumbled into bed together I've not yet found my feet or my wits again; overtures that had previously got me shot down are now silently welcomed and I haven't yet got used to the luxury. He returns them more rarely, asking for very little but refusing me nothing. I've tried starting conversations about what he's into and my inquiries mostly end in awkward silence.
But I get those looks.
He makes a lot more sense here on the other side of words. I could still talk to him forever, but lately he's shown me so much that can't be said.
I'd had a thousand or more fantasies of what would happen when we finally made love. I'd nursed them for years and they'd matured as I had - from gawky pull-off thoughts that were romantic in their simplicity, to litanies of the acts I'd tried and liked; everything I learned about what I liked to do and feel got thrown into that ever-refining, ever-selfish mirage. Becoming friends with him made him suddenly real, and I was forced to start wondering what he'd want from me once I got him between the sheets. He gave me months to guess, and to hope. And to fear - what if we were hopelessly incompatible? I'd do whatever he wanted, I figured. Anything. At least once, anyway.
And now I still don't know what but he's shown me how; with passion and openness, letting masks fall away with his clothing, cutting through all the sexual artifice I've ever learned and showing me what it's like to make love with someone you care about. No illicit thrill I've ever sampled has felt as true or powerful as that, and he's taken whatever I've offered, sex and affection and silent assurances of my lack of innocence, and responded to every part of it with open, vocal joy.
I don't think it's just (just!, as if I were somehow accustomed to this wonder) that we're lifebonded, or that he's an empath (although that part is a pure sexual blessing); I think it's simply how he is. He gives all of himself at once. If he treats everyone he goes to bed with that way, no wonder he so rarely does it at all. I've never dared let any man but him even know that I have a heart, and he wilfully dropped his into my hands the very second I set them on his body.
I watch him ride, and I let myself lapse into reveries of loving and anticipation. I do hope Melody keeps her footing because I am easily giddy enough to fall straight off her back.
I don't know anything of this place beyond what my own feelings are telling me and what I can glean from watching Vanyel; familiarity, and a cloak of poetic wyrd that I could make up a million frivolous rhymes about - I don't think this place is much less strange to him than it is to me. And maybe that's all he's brought me here for, to share stories, and make up new ones. Perhaps we've come here to share a ghost tale...
The road rounds a corner, and to my surprise we're suddenly at a lake. He looks back at me again and offers his sweetest smile yet. ...Or a fantasy.
Melody is drinking noisily from the fast-flowing water at the stream-mouth, Yfandes more delicately so, and I swear she's looking at me like she's seen something funny. Maybe she has; I know a lot of songs about how romantic woods and lakes and so on are, and I could happily sing him one, but surely he realises I've never come within a league of acting one out? I've not been this far off the beaten track in my life before now.
He's waded out into the shallows, boots tossed far up the bank, and I slip my own off and follow him out into the sunshine, gasping and wobbling - the stones are slick and the water is unexpectedly chilly, even at its most shallow, and I wonder what anyone who knew what a real bath is would be doing here.
I stumble up to him, and as I catch his hand I find the first piece of joy in it; there's no one around. No one. I bring his fingers fearlessly, foolishly, to my lips and his smile is like day breaking in my heart. How long have you waited to be carefree and love someone? I ask myself as he cups my face and kisses me, wistfully free.
"What's the matter?" he asks, sensing my confusion.
"Nothing," I assure him, because I'm not sure how I could ever be otherwise while he's touching me. "Water's a bit cold."
He shrugs. "You'll get used to it fast enough. Can you swim?"
Really, beloved, you dragged me out here on a whim and only now thought it worth asking? I leave it at "Yes," because he doesn't need to hear about childhood forays for duck-eggs along a river that was both water-fount and sewer, or about riverboat-gamblers and whore-traders or the threat that she'd sell me to them before they set sail the next morning and tell everyone that I'd drowned, how sad, so I damned well made sure I could swim and everyone on the street knew it - It's the wrong time to tell him any of that. Maybe he'll never want to know. Who the hell would?
He's simply nodding, satisfied, and he turns around and lifts up his shirt, arms crossing over as he bares his back to me in the full sun; it's like looking at an exquisite statue that someone attacked violently with a chisel, faultline scars in a half-dozen places begging me to touch and trace and take pain away. The newest wound is a barely healed pit in his shoulder tissue; one of many that was worse than it looked.
He tosses his clothes after his boots; I smile stupidly because it's a tiny endearing something that I would never have done. There was no crevice on my long-ago riverbank where they wouldn't have been found and sold before my feet touched dry earth again, but I'll do stupid, careless things with him anywhere and any time until the day he pries my heart from his own and throws it into the water. I can't look at him, be with him, see his scars and his faith in humanity, and not know that I'm playing with something dangerous.
Something I've wanted to play with for a long time now.
So help me if he ever finds out all the things I had in mind.
I let him pull me after him, shivering and suppressing my yelps as the cold water reaches places it doesn't belong; he stretches forward in the waist-deep water, turning into the slow current, watching me as he floats away on his back. I feel like my feet are sinking into metaphor - deep water, devils and tempting sirensong, and I follow him into strange currents, reaching for his hand as he slips it away from me, realising it's a race at the same moment he does.
I follow. I can't see well enough to do anything else, spray and jumping-fish arcing away from his body as the moment carries him away. I take a great breath and hold it, diving blindly onward. I kick hard and try to thrash my way ahead of him, but he's more forceful and lively than the sun on the water, and I don't know these currents and haven't a clue where he's going, I'm guided only by fleeing fish and stubbornness and the thrumming soul that always said to me, come catch me; my instinctive response, I did and I shall.
Eventually my knees brush the rockbed again and I lift my face up from the surface, and find him resting on his knees in the shallows, pulling twigs from his loose hair and chiding me. "Can't beat an injured old man?"
"Oh, shut up. Look what I found." I raise my hands from the murky shallows and let him see my catch - a whitefish floundering in my grip.
I note the look on his face - he's surprised, maybe fascinated, by my opportunistic foraging. Did he know I have it in me to be vicious? "Well, that's lunch sorted."
We ate naked. There's a lot to be said for it. He taught me how to build a campfire and then lit it with an impatient wave of his hand. We're quite a team. We pull our unfortunate spitroasted benefactor's warm flesh away from each side of her spine, sharing the additional treats of her roe and her head and leaving her guts and bones on the lakeside for the birds to play with.
I admit my surprise that he'll eat fish-heads, but he mutters something about the things you learn to do while you're at war and he sucks the bitter flesh from his fingers. I nod silently and duck away to clean my hands and face in the water. Hey, look, it's something else we have in common. Yes, I know that coming by wilds-knowing hadn't been all fun and games for him. Little ever had. I see his reflection rippling as he sits beside me, his life like his body like a map of borderland chaos, a transposed tangle unwinding itself in my heart. At least he can tell me where the scars came from. At least I can touch them, learn each of their stories.
He sets a bold hand atop my thigh and I meet his speculative eyes.
We're back in the lake in moments, rolling into the shallows with arms around each other and lips pressed together. The shock of cold water tempers my appetite, and I let myself feel and see, watch his closed eyes, his hair floating free above the pebbles, feel him fitting in my arms like a perfect damned cliche, heart beating hard against my own.
There's no way I deserve that look on his face. He's offering me everything because it's the only kind of love that he knows, and if he knew some of the things I'd consider taking -
There's guilt and love and desire in my hands, stoking my wants and also chilling them. I could ruin everything. I could have so much more. He might like it. He might never let me touch him again if he knew what I've thought about doing to him. No one so scarred should look so innocent, breathing gently against my neck and letting me touch him wherever I want to. Godsdamnit, I wish I knew how far we could go together.
I slide a little deeper into the lake and pull him with me, twisting down the slope of the lakebed so our feet face the shore and our torsos are curled above a few handspans of water. He was right, one does get used to the cold; my lust isn't retreating and neither is his, and I put one testing hand to him. That draws a ready gasp, and he throws his head back in the water, pulling me atop his body.
Some predatory impulse takes that as invitation and I set my forearm to his neck as I kiss him, then force him down before he can draw breath.
It's a game, or a race, I hope he takes it as such, my hand playing over his cock as he sinks under me, and I feel his rush of confused lust and panic. His eyes meet mine from twelve inches underwater, and I want to mouth 'trust me', and I don't dare because I'm feeling so much so overwhelmingly that I can't trust me.
He relaxes. For a long moment his life seems to tilt under my grip, shoulders sinking and his cock still jutting into my hand as I jerk him off, harder than ever; I watch tiny bubbles rise, see his eyes slip closed in the murk, feel an echo sense like the swell of a wave washing over me, an unanchored, reaching emotion that my wishful mind hears as 'I trust you' -
And I let him go.
Water sprays all around and he clings to me, heaving in air. I hold him awkwardly and wonder what in the seven hells I was playing at - roughing up someone I love who could kill me with one panicked thought? Could the stakes be any higher?
But I had it. Just for a moment I took exactly what I wanted and he let me have it.
We tumble back against the shore, and I find my body over his again. His eyes are red but bright with the life that I'd casually threatened, and he won't let go of me. Please, ask me for something. Tell me not to do it again ever. Tell me to make it up to you, and how. Tell me what you need and what you dreamed of when you dreamed about making love at a lakeside with me because it must have been better for you than that.
The words don't come, because we're kissing again. Harder and more desperately, because he has earned the right to rob me of air.
We have got to talk about this, I think hopelessly as I close my thighs over his cock.
This is one of the worse positions I've ever done this in. Definitely the worst location. My elbows are planted in the dry pebbles either side of his head, getting raked raw as I slide my pressed thighs up and down over him, trying to give him pleasure in the movement of my flesh. It's like some half-assed apology for that foul trick I pulled, and would that I could have presented it properly, come to him oiled up like a temple offering; water isn't nearly so giving.
His arms are tight around me and his face is out of sight under; he's lifting his hips with my movements and I hope that means I'm doing something right, and I should have more confidence in my competence than that, and I should be connected enough with him to know, but mostly I just feel wretched and panicked. His hold on me slackens, and he snakes a hand between us, finding my cock lodged against his belly - oh please don't, I don't need -
I bite my lip and try to have a lustful thought that isn't about that perfect still moment where I had his life in my hands. It doesn't work. That one image of him could keep me in fantasies for years, and it's so indelibly near that I can hear it whisper to me - I can hear me whisper to me - why not do it again?
No. No. I'm trying not to scare him off, for hell's sake. I am trying to make this man happy and the only way I know how is by delivering good sex, the normal kind, the kind that doesn't involve breaking nice boys on purpose. For hell's sake, I don't want to hurt him for real.
His hand tightens over me and I can't move right any more, can't keep steady and please him and let him please me and not think about it all at the same time. I roll off him, and the water isn't soothing - it's just cold.
He looks dizzily confused, squinting the sun away from his eyes. "Are you alright?" he asks, and reaches out for me again.
I take a guilty calm from his touch, as if I were silently forgiven for something I can't bring myself to ask forgiveness for, and I nod and curl my face against him, still feeling the need to make love and amends with him. Alright, so we just tried something that didn't work and it wasn't the part where I cut off his air supply. I don't even know what to think about that.
He's somehow not been put off at all; his erect cock digs hard against my hip, so I turn and press tight against him, matching his cock to my own, wrapping a hand around both of us and looking into his eyes.
I should have done this from the start, without the detours - it's close and teasing and intimate, much better with him in reality than it was in my innocent old fantasies. We press our hips together and move steady and teasingly slow, head brushing head and thin streams of fluid excitement spilling and mixing together. My hand drops, cups his balls against mine and caresses back upwards as he gasps and rubs against me. Gods, I love touching his cock. The shape of him, long and hard under tender flesh, finding friction in my contact even as he gives it to me in return.
I lean back so I can look at him while we bring ourselves closer, and I wish his fine silver eyes could save me but it's the red pressure mark on his neck that makes me gasp and want. Oh gods, I want this to be enough. Why can't I just keep enjoying him and never have these treacherous thoughts about taking and hurting and making him give me control? Hasn't he suffered enough already without the devil in me wanting him crying on his knees?
Maybe all I ever wanted is a man who won't break no matter what I do to him.
He closes his eyes and I kiss him, finding his mouth gasping open for me, tongues touching in our rhythm; my free hand slips over his shoulder and I feel him twitch as I draw too close to his wound. I touch lower, finding scar-valleys among ridges of muscle, tracing my way down to his ass, squeezing him closer. Our cocks rub hard together and my mind sinks into those confused valleys of lust, thinking of his strength and his will to survive, of each mark that he's taken and lived through, of each time I've watched him come in my arms and his face as I held him under the water still alive and marked and tender and giving me, anything, everything I ask, body and will and breath -
I come hard, grunting gracelessly into his mouth and feeling my seed pooling on my belly, and as my hand tightens around him he follows, arching against me for a long second, his head thrown back into the water.
I wish I knew what he was thinking about.
We wash and relax in the shallows, exchanging playful splashes and satisfied smiles, before swimming lazily back to our starting point. Yfandes is lounging on the riverbank; I avoid her eyes, but if she were human I'd swear she looked amused. We shake ourselves off and pull our clothes back on; his shirt clings to his torso, wet hair leaving a transparent trail against his back that shows his bare back through white linen, and I wonder again what in seven hells this beautiful, honourable man did to end up lifebonded to a monster like me.
I don't know how he's going to explain the inevitable bruise. I don't know how I'd explain it. I'm really not used to even caring what my lovers look like the next morning, let alone how they feel about me, and now I'm horrendously torn about all my darker impulses. He didn't say no. He didn't say yes. I never asked him and I don't want to know what he'd think of me if I were to do so.
It doesn't have to matter. I'll be gentle, I tell myself. I can be completely gentle.
He looks back at me one last time before mounting his companion, and he blows me an elegant kiss.
I feel gentle like the outer edge of a flame.
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And such delicious, fucked up pron it is! I love how Van was totally conditioned by Lendel to just give everything of himself and to take anything given to him. I highly doubt he would be as ridiucously kinky without Lendels early influences.
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I didn't think about it that way while writing but...oh yes. It's not even like Lendel started doing it on purpose, at least not until after Staven died. Van was just too closeted and vulnerable to ever say no to the person who loved him. Goddamnit I want accidental Lendel/Van badkink now, or just general creeping. This is totally how his outdoor sex kink began; Lendel springing it on him while they were canoodling in the grove one evening and Van feeling terrified because it was much more of a risk to him than to Lendel, but not being able to say no, and then finding he got off on both the danger and the letting-go feeling of getting to be gay somewhere outside his room. THIS HAPPENED. I am less clear on what other kinky shit Lendel did.
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